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We were the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault (JCASA); and were dedicated to ending sexual violence in Jewish communities globally. We did our best to operate as the make a wish foundation for Jewish survivors of sex crimes. In the past we offered a clearinghouse of information, resources, support and advocacy.

Accused of incest and molesting other children back in the 1960s and 70s. He was born in 1930 in Los Angeles

Mitchell's son Tom stated “The first time I [ejaculated] was in his father’s hands.

Another one of those man stated that Sheldon Mitchell began performing oral sex on him when he was 12 or 13. The abuse continued for about three years.Sheldon Mitchell left USY in 1973 and Camp Arazim in 1976 — whether he was fired or left of his own will is unclear. He moved to Cleveland soon after, where he had business, but he came back and forth to visit his family — and attend USY events — until his death. The Bay Area Jewish community turned out in force for his funeral in Sacramento.

Although organizers say Arazim may reopen next year, the future of the camp in the Stanislaus County town of Oakdale remains murky.

The director, Yaffa Tygiel, resigned because of job-scheduling conflicts, and a replacement has not been found.

In addition, the camp has long been plagued by reports of financial instability. It was, in fact, forced to sell its site to an Oakdale resident 5-1/2 years ago. The owner has since leased the site to the camp each summer.

"There's a lot of things up in the air," said Frank Kurtz, vice president of Arazim's board. "But there's a perception that it will be difficult to revive the camp...It's hard to get kids to come back if you lose continuity."

If the camp is to reopen, it probably will need to find a director first. Tygiel's absence, according to Kurtz, left a huge void that Arazim futilely struggled to fill.

That, he maintained, was the main reason for the camp's closure.

Tygiel, who is now the education director of Burlingame's Peninsula Temple Sholom, said, "Timewise, I couldn't afford to do both jobs."

She also said that the persistent rumors of Arazim's financial insolvency are unfounded.

"The fact is that we did very well financially -- with significant help from the community. The bottom line is that we didn't close the doors this summer because of financing."

Kurtz concurred that finances were not behind the camp's closure, adding, "We have enough money to limp from one year to the next."

Historically, however, the camp has often found itself on shaky ground.

The 24-acre camp has been rescued several times from the precipice of extinction by generous contributions from the community. Seven years ago, a consortium of Bay Area Conservative rabbis raised almost $100,000 in one month to fend off a threatened foreclosure. The following year, the camp was sold.

According to Kurtz, the camp's 5-year-old lease agreement with Joe Gambini, an Oakdale resident with extensive agricultural holdings in the area, has been a "wonderful arrangement."

Arazim rents the land from Gambini for about $15,000 per summer session. The sessions, which have been reduced to one per year during the past three years, have seen an average of between 100 and 120 campers. Arazim had already signed up about 60 campers by April, when enrollment was put on hold.

If the camp were to continue, one solution would be to form a partnership with leaders of the Conservative movement in the state, and with Camp Ramah in California, which operates a Conservative summer camp in Ojai.

A previous attempt to form such a partnership and operate a camp on the Saratoga site of Camp Swig fell through. Last year, a private investor pumped $3 million into Camp Swig's coffers to keep the longtime Reform movement facility alive.

The current consortium is hoping to purchase another site -- although such a plan remains in the conceptual stages.

"We're hoping that Arazim would be incorporated into a program under the aegis of Ramah," said Kurtz. "They have the panache to attract funding, and we have the Northern California flavoring."

But Brian Greene, executive director of Camp Ramah in California, said such an agreement is still on a distant horizon.

"We're a long way from having [an overnight] Ramah in Northern California," Greene said. "There are discussions taking place but it's just at the talking stage and there's no action at this point."

With the closure of Arazim and the relocation of the Hadassah-sponsored Camp Young Judaea-West to Washington state, there are no longer kosher, Shabbat-observant overnight camps in Northern California. In recent years, the Hadassah camp also operated out of a site in Oakdale.

Greene added that Arazim's closing was "a real tragedy."

"There's a lot of children that are left with nowhere to go this summer."

Former Bay Area Jewish leader accused of molesting boys in '60s and '70s

By Sue FishkoffJewish Weekly - October 24, 2013

Sheldon Mitchell was a revered youth leader in the Bay Area Jewish community in the 1970s. An energetic, charismatic man with a broad smile, Mitchell co-founded the regional arm of the Conservative movement’s United Synagogue Youth program, and was a founder of Camp Arazim, a Conservative summer camp. He held leadership positions in both organizations for years.

Married with five children, he opened his Sacramento home to troubled boys from the local Jewish community, giving them the guidance and stability their parents felt they needed. Widely admired and hugely popular in Conservative Jewish circles throughout the 1960s and ’70s, Sheldon Mitchell is credited by many with setting them on their Jewish path and inspiring their love for Judaism and communal activism.

But to his son Tom he was a monster, a man who molested him and several other boys Tom knew when they were young teens under Sheldon’s care and tutelage in the 1960s and ’70s.

Earlier this month, Tom Mitchell broke nearly 40 years of silence by posting his story on Camp Arazim’s Facebook page, writing, in part, “Sheldon Mitchell, my father, was a child molester of young boys. He was a prolific predator. He did evil things. I was one of his many victims.”

Officials at USY headquarters in New York say they don’t know anything about these allegations, or why Sheldon Mitchell left USY and Arazim a few years before he died in 1980 at age 50. Camp Arazim, which moved among several locations in the Bay Area, closed down in Oakdale (Stanislaus County) in 2000, and there is no one to speak on its behalf.

In a phone interview with J., Tom said he decided to go public this month to encourage other victims to come forward and, hopefully, begin to heal from the damage stemming from what he said was his father’s predatory behavior.

“I was made to feel that I didn’t have any value as a person,” said Tom, now 55 and living in Las Vegas. “That has followed me throughout my life. People kept my father up on that pedestal and he kept his value while I lost mine.”

Tom said his father began molesting him when he was 11 or 12, and continued doing so for several years. His father abused him at home, at camp and on USY outings, he said. In 1980, when he was in his early 20s, Tom found five other young men who also said they had been sexually molested by Sheldon Mitchell. None have spoken publicly about their experience, until now.

J. talked to three of those men and the sister of a fourth; their stories are in this report.

“Tom is telling the truth,” one of the men told J. “The first time I [ejaculated] was in his father’s hands. It was at camp. I was 12 or 13. It went from there to his camper. He’d invite me there and would perform oral sex.”

Another one of those men, now 56 and living on the East Coast, told J. that Sheldon began performing oral sex on him when he was 12 or 13. The abuse continued for about three years, he said. Like the other victims who spoke to J., this man said Sheldon did not use physical force on him. “There are other kinds of force,” he noted. He spoke on condition of anonymity, to protect his family, he said.

Since Tom’s Oct. 7 Facebook post, two more men have come forward to say they were also targeted by Sheldon Mitchell when they were boys.

Sheldon Mitchell left USY in 1973 and Camp Arazim in 1976 — whether he was fired or left of his own will is unclear. He moved to Cleveland soon after, where he had business, but he came back and forth to visit his family — and attend USY events — until his death. The Bay Area Jewish community turned out in force for his funeral in Sacramento.

Tom’s Facebook post hit those who knew him and his family hard. Camp alumni flooded the website with comments, all of them supportive of Tom. “My heart goes out to you,” wrote one. “Thank you for your courage and bravery,” wrote another.

Local Jewish lay leaders and rabbis who knew and worked with Sheldon and were contacted by J. reacted with shock and sorrow when they heard Tom’s story. Each of them said they weren’t aware at the time of anything inappropriate going on.

“If you knew me, my family, USYers or Arazim campers in the 1960s-70s, I guarantee you also know other victims,” Tom wrote in his post. “You just don’t know you know them.”

How did this happen? If the allegations are true — and no one interviewed for this article suggests they were not — then how was Sheldon Mitchell able to keep working with boys under the auspices of Bay Area Jewish organizations for so many years? Why did he abruptly leave his position as Arazim’s administrative director in the summer of 1976? Why did he continue to show up at USY events for years afterward?

And if the sexual molestation did happen, who knew what and when, and why is this only coming to light now?

It was different in the 1970s, said some of those interviewed. It was the height of the sexual revolution, and for many in that generation, personal boundaries were becoming blurry. Sheldon Mitchell was part of that generation. Born in 1930 in Los Angeles, in 1951 he married Inga Brock, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria. The couple settled in Oakland, where Inga gave birth to a daughter and four sons. Tom, born in 1958, was the youngest. In 1961, the family moved to Sacramento and joined the Mosaic Law Congregation, where Sheldon was a youth director.

In 1970, Sheldon was a driving force in establishing the “New Frontiers” region of USY, covering Reno and Northern California. Two years later he helped create Camp Arazim, which held its first session in Soquel (Santa Cruz County) in the summer of 1972. Sheldon served as its administrative director, a position he held for five summers.

It was during this time that Tom Mitchell says his father began abusing him. “I was 11 or 12,” he told J. by phone. Most of the abuse involved his father performing oral sex on him, he says. Sheldon wanted the boy to reciprocate, and to permit anal intercourse, but Tom says he “didn’t want to” and his father “didn’t force it.”

In the mid-’70s, Sheldon bought a condo at Incline Village near Lake Tahoe and would take groups there from Kadima, the USY group for middle school students he worked with in Sacramento. Tom went along on some of those outings, and says his father abused him at the condo, as well.

“If he did it to me there, he did it to other boys there, too,” Tom said in an interview. He said he doesn't remember exactly when his father stopped molesting him — it went on for a few years, he thinks. "It stopped when I was able to stop it," he said.

Meanwhile, Sheldon’s popularity and influence continued to grow.

Rabbi Nat Ezray of Congregation Beth Jacob in Redwood City was a Kadima kid in Sacramento and a camper at Arazim its first few years. Until this month, he had only good memories of Sheldon.

“Now I don’t know what I remember and what is part of the mythology,” he said. “He was this kind of icon who established amazing programs and Jewish experiences for kids. For many of us, USY built our Jewish identity. And for many of us, he was the icon that created these things. [Tom’s revelations] dashed all that.”

In 1973, Palo Alto resident Ellen Bob was 16 and regional vice president of USY at Congregation Kol Emeth. Sheldon was regional director. She said he was let go that spring on orders from national USY in New York. “We [USY kids] were told he wasn’t following USY rules,” she recalled. “We thought that was bogus. We were so angry at national USY. We had no idea there was any inappropriate behavior.

“If United Synagogue knew he was molesting kids and didn’t say anything …” she said, her voice petering out. (USY is a program of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.)

Jules Gutin, longtime international director of USY until becoming the group’s senior educational adviser last year, told J. by email that he came on after Sheldon Mitchell’s time and never knew the man. “I wish I could help, but I was not even aware that he was dismissed,” Gutin wrote in response to a J. inquiry. “I don’t know of anyone employed by USCJ who could provide any info, since there has obviously been significant staff turnover since those days.”

Whatever happened with USY, Sheldon Mitchell remained at Camp Arazim for three more years. Rabbi Marvin Goodman, now executive director of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California, was director of the camp in 1975. He also served as regional director of USY, and said he saw Sheldon at USY events as late as 1978. That didn’t seem odd, Goodman added, as Sheldon was the regional founder of the organization. Goodman said he was absolutely unaware of any sexual misconduct by Sheldon.

Tom was working as a junior counselor in 1976 when the camp had moved from Soquel to the Stanford campus for a year. All of a sudden, one day his father wasn’t working there anymore, Tom recalled.

At some point that summer, Sheldon started spending more time in Cleveland, where he and his wife had business, and eventually took an apartment there, coming home to Sacramento only infrequently. He died of a heart attack in Cleveland on April 30, 1980.

Was Sheldon fired because someone discovered he was abusing campers? Tom said yes, that a former staff member told him this month that a camp official discovered Sheldon with a boy at camp and Sheldon was let go that same day. The staff member did not want to be interviewed by J.

Jack Gruenberg was Arazim’s director the summer of 1976. Now living in New York, Gruenberg told J. he has “no recollection” of why Sheldon Mitchell left the camp that summer.

“I just remember him leaving suddenly,” Gruenberg said. “I had nothing to do with his dismissal. But I do know the summer he left, there were suspicions of him behaving inappropriately and molesting boys. My recollection is that it was only boys, not girls. As far as I know, it was never pursued then.”

Palo Alto resident Jerry Bentkowsky, who helped found Arazim and was chair of its board of directors, said Sheldon was not fired from camp, but rather told Bentkowsky he needed to leave. Sheldon came to him some time in 1976, he said, “and told me that his business in Cleveland had gotten very big and he could no longer conduct it by commuting. I had no reason to doubt his story.”

Whatever might have been Sheldon Mitchell’s real reasons for leaving, said Bentkowsky, “the community did not know.”

Sandy Stadtler, now a CPA in San Francisco, did a couple of stints as Arazim camp director in the 1970s, and stayed with the Mitchell family during his first stint in 1973.

“I lived at their house, and I never had any inkling,” said Stadtler, who was 24 at the time and in business school in New York during the academic year. “He and I were friends. The kids adored him. He’d do anything for anybody.”

Stadtler and Bentkowsky, both of whom worked with Sheldon Mitchell on a daily basis at the camp, said they were stunned to read Tom Mitchell’s Facebook posting.

“This revelation was just an enormous shock for me,” said Bentkowsky. “I had absolutely zero indication of any problem.

“He had done so much for the community. Sheldon was one of the most effective promoters of Conservative Judaism in Northern California.” Camp Arazim’s board included most of the Conservative congregations in Northern California, though the camp had no formal affiliation with the movement.

When Stadtler returned to Arazim as camp director in 1977, Sheldon was no longer there, but Stadtler didn’t think that unusual. “He moved to Cleveland. That’s all I knew. It didn’t strike me as weird … I never heard a word about him at camp. And I was the director!

“Now I keep churning it in my mind. What clues did I miss? I was young, it was a different time — who was thinking of pedophilia?”

Public awareness of child sexual abuse was just beginning to grow in the 1970s. In 1974, Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, authorizing federal funds to improve government response to physical and sexual abuse. According to “A Short History of Child Protection in America” by John E.B. Myers, published in the fall 2008 issue of Family Law Quarterly, CAPTA focused particular attention on improved investigation and reporting. By 1976, Myers wrote, every state had laws requiring professionals to report sexual abuse of children.

But awareness of those laws, and social acceptance of the need to report inappropriate touching and fondling, took longer to develop.

“People touched each other, but it was normal. It was the ’60s and ’70s,” said Ellen Bob. “Sure, [Sheldon] would walk by and rub my shoulders,” she said, noting that impromptu shoulder massages were common in those days. “Did he seem more touchy than the others? No. There weren’t those clear lines between children and adults that we have today.”

Sexual abuse affects more than the victim; it can damage entire families. Faye Backer LaGanga, 48, was at Arazim for 13 years, from 1975 when she was a camper to 1988 when she was 21 and worked as a counselor. Her two brothers also worked at the camp, and she said her family was very close to the Mitchells.

A few years after Sheldon’s death, LaGanga found out from her sister that he had sexually molested one of their brothers for years. “In that era, you didn’t talk about things,” she told J. by phone. “You didn’t go to a psychiatrist. My parents never spoke to me of what happened.”

Once she found out, LaGanga said, “It explained a lot of what went on in my childhood. My brother was 11 years older than me. When he was young he was molested. And his attitude and his life changed. I have to wonder if the guilt my mother felt at not being able to protect her first-born son might have helped her demise.” (J. was unable to speak to the brother.)

Another man who said Sheldon Mitchell molested him years ago spoke to J. on condition that his name not be used. Now 54 and living outside California, he was one of the five who told Tom Mitchell about the abuse in the early ’80s.

This man lived with the Mitchells in Sacramento during his sophomore year in high school when he was 15 — one of the “troubled” boys Sheldon and Inga took in over the years. “I didn’t get along with my parents. I was in trouble in school,” the man said. “Sometimes my parents let me go off on weekends with [Sheldon]. I stayed with him in a motel in San Francisco one time. It was always oral sex.”

Also during that year, the Mitchells would sometimes visit Tom’s grandparents in Oakland. Inga would drive, Tom would sit in the front next to her and Sheldon would be in the back seat with the 15-year-old. “Sheldon would perform oral or hand sex on me in the back seat,” he said. “I’d think: Doesn’t anyone know what’s going on?”

The molestation continued all that year, he said, in various locations. “It scared the hell out of me. When Sheldon died, I told my mom, ‘You know, he molested me.’ She said, ‘I thought something was going on.’ I thought to myself, ‘Wow.’ ”

In the 1980s, Tom told his own mother about the molestation. Until her death in 2012, Inga Mitchell professed not to have known about it when it was occurring, he said.

Many years have passed since these events allegedly took place. Those who say they were molested by Sheldon Mitchell as boys are now in their 50s. So why rehash old memories? What will it help?

Tom Mitchell, the boy who kept his pain inside for so many years, said he decided to tell his story on the Camp Arazim Facebook page to help himself heal, and to encourage others to seek healing, too.

“Everything in my life has been affected by this,” Tom said.

Last month, before his Facebook posting, Tom told his children, now 21 and 23, about the abuse he suffered at the hands of the grandfather they never knew. When they were little, he was hyperaware of his behavior with them because of what his father did to him, he said — “being conscious of having them on my lap, lying in bed with them and making sure the door was open,” he related.

“I went public hoping other victims would come forward and find the strength to publicly corroborate my story,” he told J. “In cases like this, nobody talks about it until one person comes forward. Molesters have that power, and kids don’t come forward until years later.”

One of the two men who have stepped forward since Tom posted the story on Arazim’s Facebook page, David Lieb, sent Tom copies of letters Sheldon wrote to him in 1979 and early 1980, when the boy was 14 and 15 years old.

“Dear David, I miss you, I love you, I wish I was with you. I think of you a whole lot,” Tom read from one of the letters, which he described as typed on his father’s letterhead. Asking the boy to visit him in Cleveland, Sheldon implored: “Write me a long, long letter, 1,000 pages, so I can read it over and over again.”

"I was never molested by Sheldon, thank goodness, at least not in any explicitly sexual way," Lieb wrote in an email to J. He is allowing his name to be used in this article "to encourage victims to feel less shame."

Today there are numerous laws and practices in place aimed at protecting children from sexual abuse. One Jewish lay leader interviewed noted that at his synagogue, the rabbi never meets with children behind closed doors, and every office has windows. At camps and in youth groups, rules govern what is and is not appropriate touching. Some say it’s gone too far, noting that teachers have been prosecuted for hugging children or patting them on the arm. But awareness is high.

Still, abuse happens, with prominent stories emerging from the Catholic Church and, recently, the New York Orthodox Jewish community. “It’s not uncommon, unfortunately,” said Anita Friedman, longtime director of S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services. “But today there is greater awareness and support. There is a system of recourse, a body of law that didn’t exist in those days. And because there’s more awareness, we hope there’s less stigma attached to coming forward and asking for help. It’s important that they don’t feel their problems are due to their own individual inadequacies.”

Although it wasn’t in his mind when he posted his story, Tom said now he’s looking for answers. Who knew about his father’s sexual transgressions, and why weren’t they brought to light at the time?

“I want the public to know, and I want some outcry,” he said.

Because Sheldon Mitchell was never caught, Tom said, he was free to continue his molestations until his death in 1980. If he had gone to jail, Tom suggested, other boys might have been spared.

In his Oct. 7 posting, Tom wrote:

“I don’t want you to change your happy memories of USY or Arazim, you can’t. You have to reconcile that there were good things that came out of your experiences with Arazim and USY with the fact that they were the result of a child molester’s dreams… His known and unknown victims, and their families, have suffered greatly. We owe our empathy to them to take the memory of Sheldon Mitchell off his pedestal and put it where it belongs.

This week we run a story that makes for very difficult reading — a son accusing his father of sexual molestation. And not just any father, but a man revered in the Bay Area Jewish community as a leading light in the Conservative movement of the 1970s.

Earlier this month, Tom Mitchell, now 55 and living in Las Vegas, posted a heartrending letter on Facebook accusing his father, Sheldon Mitchell, of abusing him and a number of other Jewish boys in the late 1960s and ’70s. The abuse allegedly took place at different locations, notably the Mitchells’ Sacramento home; on United Synagogue Youth outings; and at Camp Arazim, a Bay Area Jewish summer camp that Mitchell co-founded in 1972.

Tom and two other men who also say they were sexually molested by Sheldon Mitchell as pre-teens and teens spoke to J. about their experiences. Given the times, before sexual abuse was discussed openly, the crimes went unreported, the victims silent in their shame and pain.

This all took place a very long time ago. Sheldon Mitchell died in 1980, and the men accusing him are now in their 50s. Some might ask, why dredge it up at this point?

First of all, the victims deserve answers.

Those interviewed for this story who worked at the camp or USY and knew Sheldon Mitchell were all shocked at Tom Mitchell’s allegations. None of them dispute his story, but none of them confirmed it, either.

Someone had to know something, but no one is talking.

Second, we are running this story because there is no statute of limitations on trauma. This is not an issue that should ever be swept under the rug or kept silent, no matter when, where or how it happened.

Tom Mitchell decided to end his years of silence and encourage other victims of sexual abuse to come forward and begin the healing process. We decided to publish our story for the same reason. On page 5a, Rabbi Nat Ezray of Congregation Beth Jacob in Redwood City writes that he and other Jewish professionals are here and ready to counsel those affected by abuse, be it sexual or physical. His essay ends with a list of local resources for victims and their families.

This is not a Jewish problem, but one that transcends all cultures, all societies. We are fortunate that in our day there are myriad avenues of help available to victims. Professionals are trained to be on the lookout for signs of abuse, and the justice system shows little mercy for perpetrators.

We call for renewed vigilance as well as strong community support for all those damaged by abuse at the hands of those they trust.

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For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml . If you wish to use copyrighted material from this update for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner._________________________________________________________________________________"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead_________________________________________________________________________________

The goals of this workshop will help participants learn to recognize what mind control is, how to recognize and avoid being influenced by destructive and controlling practices which can occur within families, in relationships, at schools, yeshivas and within various other religious and professional organization.

This workshop is dedicated to the memory of Deb Tambor, a woman who grew up in the chassidic world and found the need to walk away. Abe Weiss, who was Deb's boyfriend will speak briefly about her life and his own experience of going Off The Derech (OTD).

Steve Hassanhas dedicated his life to helping loved ones leave controlling people, cults and beliefs. Steve is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) in the State of Massachusetts and a Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC). He has been educating the public about controlling groups and individuals for nearly forty years. Steve is a member of The Awareness Center’s international advisory board and is also the founder and director of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center. In the past Steve’s appeared on 60 Minutes, Nightline, Dateline, Larry King Live, and The O’Reilly Factor.

Steve is also created the "BITE Model of Cult Mind Control", and the author of "Combatting Cult Mind Control: Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults"; "Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves" and “Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs.”

Vicki Polin, MA, LCPCis a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in the State of Illinois who has been helping survivors of sex crimes heal for just under thirty years. Throughout Vicki’s career she has counseled both adults and children of sex crimes, she has also worked with survivors of political torture, domestic violence, individuals with addiction issues, along with survivors who were involved in cults.In the past Vicki has qualified as an expert witness and provided testimony in juvenile court on cases related to childhood sexual abuse and neglect. She has presented educational and experiential seminars to community groups, universities, and at professional conferences internationally –– including at Jewish Women International (JWI) Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), National Organization for Women (NOW), and the United Nations Conference on the Status of Women. Vicki has also provided testimony at legislative hearings across the United States.

Vicki is the founder and director of The Awareness Center, which is the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault (JCASA). Vicki is also the author of “The 1997 Chicagoland Area Sexual Abuse Resource Guide for Care Providers and Survivors”.Directions:Good Samaritan Hospital255 Lafayette Ave. Suffern, NYClick here for directionsFor information on Public Transportation from either Brooklyn or NYC(NOTE: you will have to either take a cab or walk a distance once you arrive to get to the hospital):

Arrested during an internet sting along with 7 other men. The charges include kidnapping, extortion, various forms of torture including sexually assaulted men with a stun gun on their genitals. The goal of this gang was to force men to give their wives a Get (Jewish Divorce), after the women paid the gang anywhere between $10,000 - $50,000. Instead of raising funds to help the men victimized by these crimes Chabad organized a fundraiser to pay for the defense of Rabbi Sholom Shuchat. The committee members of this fundraiser include rabbis Golan Benoni, Lipa Brennan, Sholem B. Hecht, Shea Hecht, Yosef Orenstein, Moshe Pinson, Yoni Raskin, Benzion Stock.Sholom Shuchat was born in 1984

The woman sounded desperate. Her marriage had deteriorated, her husband decided he did not want children and he refused to grant her a divorce.

The rabbi had a plan.

“We take an electric cattle prod,” he told her, according to a surveillance recording. “If it can get a bull that weighs five tons to move ... You put it in certain parts of his body and in one minute the guy will know ... ”

In a bizarre plot sounding more like a scene out of The Sopranos than the affairs of an ultra-religious community, two Orthodox rabbis and eight others were charged in New Jersey Thursday in a torture-for-hire operation involving threats of kidnapping, beatings and the use of such implements as handcuffs, knives and stun guns — all aimed at convincing recalcitrant husbands to grant their wives religious divorces.

Most of those arrested were taken into custody at a Middlesex County warehouse Wednesday night — some wearing Halloween masks and one in a Metallica T-shirt — as they waited to grab a supposed victim for a rough lesson in divorce law. It was all a set-up: The woman was an FBI undercover agent, there was no husband and the conversations were all recorded.

U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said at least one of those charged admitted he had participated in similar kidnappings in the past and investigators believe there may have been as many as several dozen assaults conducted by the same group over a period of many years.

1147 Mackenzie Court, Lakewood property owned by Rabbis Mendel Epstein. Epstein, is one of two rabbis charged in the recent scheme to force men to grant their wives religious divorces.Patti Sapone/The Star-Ledger

“One of the defendants almost bragged that they had done this to other people before,” Fishman said.

The cost of convincing was not cheap. According to the FBI, the going rate was $10,000 to pay off a rabbinical court to approve a kidnapping and then another $50,000 to $60,000 to pay for the “tough guys” who would mete out beatings and other torture until a reluctant spouse finally acquiesced.

Those charged included Rabbi Mendel Epstein, 68, who has homes in Lakewood and Brooklyn, and Rabbi Martin Wolmark, 55, a school administrator at a yeshiva in Monsey, N.Y. Both were arrested Wednesday night at their homes.

Chabad Rabbi - Sholom Shuchat

Also charged were Ariel Potash, 40, and seven other men who were said to be enforcers or witnesses — Jay “Yaakov” Goldstein, Moshe Goldstein, Binyamin Stimler, David Hellman, Simcha Bulmash, Avrohom Goldstein and Sholom Shuchat, who were all arrested in New Jersey. Their address and ages were not given.

All 10 appeared in federal court in Trenton Thursday and were ordered held without bail.

Divorce in the Orthodox community is governed not by secular law, but by a rabbinical court. And under Jewish law, a wife may not sue for divorce unless her husband agrees to provide her with a document known as a “get.” The court, known as a “beth din,” can order the husband to issue a get, however, in a bitter divorce dispute there is often no quick resolution and no guarantee he will accept the edict.

“It’s not like a civil divorce,” said family practice attorney Janet Pennisi of Millburn. She has represented Orthodox clients who have given away a lot in property rights for the sole purpose of getting their husbands to give them a get.

“For religious people, a get is everything, and there is no real authority to get it sometimes except through back alley approaches,” Pennisi said.

In fact, without a “get,” a woman can end up in limbo for years. She becomes known as an “agunah,” a woman chained to her marriage, unable to remarry.

According to a complaint outlined in federal court Thursday, the 10 men charged were willing — for a price — to provide the “convincing” by any means possible. In one recorded meeting, Epstein spoke about kidnapping, beating and torturing husbands to in order to force a divorce, according the complaint.

Epstein, known in the community as a divorce mediator, admitted on the surveillance tape to committing similar kidnappings.“This is an expensive thing to do,” he said. “It’s not simply … basically what we are going to be doing is kidnapping a guy for a couple of hours and beating him up and torturing him and then getting him to give the get.”

“Basically the reaction of the police is, if the guy does not have a mark on him … then, uh, is there some Jewish crazy affair here, and they don’t get involved,” he said, according to the complaint.

In 1998, Epstein and Wolmark were both accused in a civil racketeering suit with taking part in the abduction and torture of a Brooklyn rabbi who refused his wife’s request for a get. No criminal charges were filed and court records show the lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.

Sources say the charges Thursday came out of the continuing investigation of David Wax, a 49-year-old rabbi and Talmudic scholar from Lakewood, and his wife, Judy, who were charged by federal authorities two years ago with kidnapping and severely beating an Israeli man who had refused to give his wife a divorce. That case has been repeatedly adjourned for months. Lawyers for the couple Thursday could not say if they were cooperating with the FBI.

Wolmark was initially contacted in August by an FBI undercover agent posing as an Orthodox married woman in an unhappy marriage. Accompanied by a second undercover agent acting as her brother, she told him she was desperate for a divorce because her husband refused to have children. She was willing to pay a large sum of money to obtain a divorce. Wolmark, according to the complaint, connected her with Epstein.

The planning for the kidnapping got underway last month, when a team of so-called “enforcers” drove to a warehouse in Middlesex County to determine if it was suitable for the kidnapping. In a graphic conversation, Epstein talked about the use not only of cattle prods, but handcuffs and other measures to be taken by hired enforcers.

“I guarantee you that if you’re in the van, you’d give a get to your wife,” he told the agent posing as the woman’s brother. “You probably love your wife, but you’d give a get when they finish with you.”

It would not take a lot of time, he promised.

“They don’t need him for long, believe me. They’ll have him in the van, hooded, and it will happen,” he said.

According to the FBI, most of those charged were arrested as they gathered to snatch the kidnap victim at the warehouse. They arrived in two dark minivans around 8 p.m., putting on Halloween masks, ski masks or bandanas, carrying rope, flashlights, surgical blades, a screwdriver, and plastic bags.

As they waited for the husband, an arrest team swept in.

The arrests were accompanied by a series of searches executed by the FBI in Lakewood, Monsey, Brooklyn and elsewhere, including Yeshiva Shaarei Torah in the Monsey section of Ramapo, N.Y., where Wolmark is an administrator.

Appearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas E. Arpert, the 10 defendants walked into a courtroom packed with family and friends. Wearing handcuffs, they sat stone faced as Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Gribko alleged they had kidnapped “literally dozens” of husbands reluctant to give a divorce.

One had a tracking device placed in his car, Gribko alleged. Another, an unnamed congressional staffer, was “assaulted in broad daylight in his minivan in Pennsylvania.”

“The danger to the community in this case, for this violent crime, cannot be overstated,” Gribko said.

All were denied requests for bail or house arrest from defense attorneys, who argued that seven of the men played only bit parts in the scheme. The judge scheduled a preliminary hearing for Oct. 18 in Trenton.

Attorney: Monsey rabbi tied to divorce gang could be released on bail by Friday

LoHud - October 16, 2013

A Monsey rabbi alleged to have been a mastermind behind a kidnap team that used torture as a means to persuade Orthodox Jewish men to grant their wives a religious divorce hopes to be out on bond by Friday, his attorney said.

Rabbi Martin “Mordachai” Wolmark, the head of Yeshiva Shaarei Torah in Monsey, appeared in federal court Wednesday alongside several men accused of having a role in the kidnappings.

Wolmark’s attorney, Marc Agnifilo, of the Manhattan-based firm Brafman & Associates, said U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Douglas E. Arpert agreed to his client’s release on condition that he surrender $5 million bond secured by property, remain under electronic home confinement and turn his passport over to authorities.

“We are pleased the court accepted Rabbi Wolmark’s bail package. That he was able to offer $5 million in equity shows that his family, friends and community support him. We look forward to defending these allegations with the Rabbi a free man,” Agnifilo said in an email. “We are posting the properties tomorrow and we hope he will be released by Friday.”

Agnifilo said two properties are being used to secure the bond. He declined to identify the properties or their owners.

Joining Wolmark in court Wednesday was Rabbi Mendel Epstein, another suspected mastermind and a prominent Ultra-Orthodox divorce mediator with homes in Brooklyn and New Jersey, and Ariel Potash, Binyamin Stimler, David Helman and Sholom Shuchat, four of the eight suspected gang members.

The six men sat shackled in the jury box, wearing green jumpsuits and black yarmulkes as more than 50 supporters and family members watched the proceedings. A U.S. marshal unlocked Epstein’s handcuffs, but not those of the others.

Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Joseph Gribko said none of the men should be released regardless of their religious backgrounds.

“Had we been talking about the mob or the Bloods or the Crips, we wouldn’t even be discussing a bond in this case,” he told Arpert. “There’s no difference between them and these other gangs that engage in violent crime.”

The men are accused of plotting to kidnap, beat and torture — with cattle prods — Jewish husbands reluctant to provide a religious divorce, or “get,” to their wives. The complaint claims the group kidnapped and tortured as many as 24 Orthodox Jewish men over the years.

Wolmark and his co-defendants had been held without bail since their arrest Oct. 9.

A clerk in Trenton’s federal court said the group is being held in a jail in Philadelphia but was unable to name the facility.

Epstein’s bail package was similar to Wolmark’s, the most notable difference being that four of his daughters and his wife are expected to put up five pieces of property valued at more than $4 million to secure his release. Agnifilo said the difference between the two bonds is reflective of Wolmark’s available assets rather than any indication of his culpability in the case.

Four other defendants, Jay Goldstein, Moshe Goldstein, Simcha Bulmash and Avrohom Goldstein, have yet to have bail hearings. If convicted, the defendants could all face up to life in prison.

A rabbi who is charged in a kidnap-torture scheme that used cattle prods to force Orthodox Jewish husbands to grant their wives divorces has been responsible for 20 or so kidnappings, a prosecutor alleged Wednesday.

The remarks of Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Joseph Gribko were made in federal court in Trenton, N.J., during a bail hearing for six of the 10 defendants who were charged in the plot.

Epstein — who will remain under home confinement at his house in Lakewood, N.J., once released — denies any wrongdoing, his Manhattan-based attorney, Susan Necheles, said in court.

"It's a matter for trial," she said.

But the case is growing, Gribko said during his appeal to U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Douglas E. Arpert to keep Epstein locked up.

"My phone has not stopped ringing with calls from potential victims," he said, mentioning the hotline for those calls, 800-CALL-FBI. "The threat to the public is ongoing as we speak."

Rejecting those comments, Arpert ruled that Epstein, a prominent ultra-Orthodox divorce mediator in Brooklyn, N.Y., another rabbi, Martin "Mordachai" Wolmark, of Monsey, N.Y., and the four other men could be freed on bail that runs into millions of dollars for some defendants.

Wolmark's Manhattan-based attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said he expects Wolmark, who is the head of Yeshiva Shaarei Torah in Monsey, to be released Friday. There was no word from authorities or defense attorneys on whether any of the other men had worked out the conditions of their bail by Wednesday night.

Arpert ordered home confinement, electronic monitoring and other tight restrictions for all six defendants.

Epstein, 68; Wolmark, 55; Ariel Potash, a 40-year-old traveling salesman; Binyamin Stimler, 38, a psychotherapist and teacher who has a home in Lakewood but is listed as a Brooklyn resident; David Helman, 30, a personal trainer from Far Rockaway, N.Y.; and Sholom Shuchat, 28, the father of two small children — were being held at the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center and were expected to be returned there Wednesday evening.

The yeshiva was raided by the FBI on Oct. 9. Wolmark was set to be released on a $5 million bond secured by two properties that have $2 million in equity. Agnifilo said the bail amount is tied to Wolmark's available assets and "does not reflect his culpability."

His conditions followed those of Epstein's, who is allowed out of his home for medical reasons, to visit his attorney and for religious worship, once during the day and for Shabbat on Friday evening.

Four daughters and Epstein's wife were scheduled to put up five pieces of property totaling more than $4 million in value to secure his release.

he six men sat shackled in the jury box wearing Army green jumpsuits and black yarmulkes as more than 50 supporters and family members watched the proceedings. Several people rose for the white-bearded Epstein as he was led into the courtroom. A U.S. marshal unlocked his handcuffs, but not those of the others.

Four other defendants — Jay Goldstein, 59, Moshe Goldstein, 30, Simcha Bulmash, 30, and Avrohom Goldstein, 33 — have yet to have bail set and were still being held at the detention center. All the men — including Epstein — are listed as having a hometown of Brooklyn, except for Wolmark, Helman and Bulmash. There was no hometown listed for Bulmash, a New York state resident.

"This man is all about his family," Necheles told Arpert, mentioning Epstein's eight children, more than 50 grandchildren and four great grandchildren. "If he were to flee, all of his children and grandchildren would be out on the street."

Gribko said none of the men should be released regardless of their religious backgrounds.

"Had we been talking about the mob or the Bloods or the Crips we wouldn't even be discussing a bond in this case," he said. "There's no difference between them and these other gangs that engage in violent crime."

The men are accused of plotting to kidnap, beat and torture — with cattle prods —Jewish husbands reluctant to provide religious divorces, or gets.

If convicted, they could face up to life in prison.

An undercover FBI special agent posed as an Orthodox Jewish wife whose husband was unwilling to consent to divorce, while a second agent posed as the wife's brother, the complaint said. On Aug. 7, both agents called Wolmark to present their case and tell him they were willing to pay a large sum of money to obtain the divorce. Wolmark explained how he could coerce the divorce, but it would be expensive, the complaint said.

Epstein told them the kidnapping would cost $10,000 to pay for the rabbis on the rabbinical court to approve the kidnapping and an additional $50,000 to $60,000 to pay for the "tough guys" who would conduct the beating and obtain the forced get, the complaint said.

According to the complaint, the "tough guys" would use electric cattle prods, karate and handcuffs, and place plastic bags over the heads of husbands.

"We take an electric cattle prod," Epstein said.

"Electric cattle prod, OK," the undercover agent replied.

"If it can get a bull that weighs five tons to move ... you put it in certain parts of his body and in one minute the guy will know," Epstein said, according to the complaint.

A law-enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation said the arrests were the direct result of a 2011 case in which a Lakewood couple, David and Judy Wax, were accused of kidnapping an Israeli national in an attempt to force him to divorce his estranged wife in Israel. Proceedings in that case have been repeatedly postponed since the arrest.

Chabad launches a pidyon shvuyim fund for Rabbi Sholom Shuchat, a Chabad dayan (rabbinic judge) who sits of the beit din (religious court) of Agudas Harabbonim. Shuchat is one of the ten men arrested from the haredi kidnap-torture-extortion gang that kidnapped and tortured recalcitrant husbands to force them to grant their wives Jewish divorces known as gittin (plural; get, singular). It is the same pidyon shvuyim fund used for Sholom Rubashkin in 2008-2010, and the defense committee also shares at least one member – Rabbi Shea Hecht.

To Crown Heights Community Rabbonim & Synagogue Leaders:

We are writing to you on behalf of a Crown Heights resident, a young, Torah scholar who has devoted himself to matters of Halacha and especially Gittin during the last few years. Because of his well intentioned activities he is now facing a very serious legal challenge and must put together a capable and respected Defense Team to help clear his name and exonerate him.

His family has put together the necessary securities in order to obtain bail. However, the Judge has decided that he must be kept under house arrest.

At the request of his family and community leaders a Committee has been formed to work together with the family and the Legal Team to be of assistance in the fundraising, distribution of payments and other proceedings that will evolve in this ongoing case.

Here are the facts of the story as they stand today:

1. This Yungerman has been an experienced witness for several years in Gittin. He has worked with Crown Heights Rabbonim on Gittin and has also worked with several Batei Dinim outside of Crown Heights. Because of his experience and knowledge, he has not shied away from difficult cases. In the current case, he was not knowledgeable of all of the details involved at the time that he joined together with the other members of the Bais Din to effectuate the Get.

2. He has currently been released on $500,000 bail. Securities have been provided by the family and he is being held under house arrest. The bail lawyer has been paid. The family is currently in the process of hiring a team of lawyers to defend him in the ongoing case. The minimum amount that will be needed for the retainer is $50,000, but it may be more.

3. The family has been able to put together, from their own resources, $15,000 but the total $50,000 is needed by Monday, October 21, 2013.

4. Knowledgeable people in these types of cases estimate that the legal fees could rise to $200,000 or $300,000.

We request from the Rabbonim and the community leaders to kindly hold an appeal in all of the Shuls of Crown Heights on this Shabbos Parshas Vayeira. The undersigned Committee will oversee the receipt and distribution of the funds in a proper fashion.

The National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education (NCFJE) Pidyon Shivuyim Fund is a recognized 501c3 organization and therefore all donations made to NCFJE Pidyon Shivuyim will be tax-deductible. The “Committee for 5774 Initiative” will make sure to oversee the distribution of all of the funds donated for the purpose of the defense of this individual.

The Prosecutors are trying to make this a case which could involve a sentence of “Life in Prison.” We appeal to your Congregants to be generous and donate as much as they possibly can so that we can help the family in their time of need.

Please give your kind donations to the Gabbai of your Shul on Sunday, October 20, 2013 or deliver it direct to the NCFJE offices at 824 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11213 in order to be deposited on Monday 10/21/13.

The check can be written out to: NCFJE-Pidyon Shivuyim

Donations can be made online: www.ncfje.org/Pidyon or click on the “Pidyon Shivuyim” tab on the www.ncfje.org website.

New York (CNN) -- A federal judge set bail Friday for four of 10 men facing kidnapping charges after allegedly arranging the violent assaults of Orthodox Jewish husbands, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Judge Douglas Arpert set bail at $1 million for Jay "Yaakov" Goldstein, while the other three -- Moshe Goldstein, Avrohom Goldstein and Simcha Bulmash -- had bail set at $500,000, said Matthew Riley, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of New Jersey.

Jay Goldstein's attorney, Aidan P. O'Connor, told CNN on Thursday he hoped his client would be able to leave jail and reunite with his family.

Goldstein, Rabbi Mendel Epstein and Rabbi Martin Wolmark, along with seven other defendants, are accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars to orchestrate the kidnappings of Jewish husbands to persuade them to grant divorces to their wives, according to a criminal complaint.

Goldstein is a sofer, a Jewish scribe who transcribes the Torah and writes other religious documents, including divorce papers, according to his attorney.

On Wednesday, Arpert set bail between $500,000 and $1 million for the two rabbis, along with four other defendants: Ariel Potash, Binyamin Stimler, David Hellman and Sholom Shuchat.

Arpert also ordered home arrest -- with exceptions to leave for medical reasons, attorney meetings and religious purposes -- for all six, according to court documents.

Jay Goldstein, the rabbis and the other men were arrested after an FBI undercover investigation that led to a raid on October 9, according to the criminal complaint.

In one conversation with undercover FBI agents, the complaint alleges that Epstein talked about forcing the divorces with the help of hired "tough guys," who he said used plastic bags to cover the husbands' heads, and electric cattle prods and karate to assault them.

"I guarantee you that if you're in the van, you'd give a 'get' to your wife. You probably love your wife, but you'd give a 'get' when they finish with you," Epstein told the undercover FBI agents.

A "get" is a document that Jewish law requires a husband to present to his wife to be issued a divorce, the complaint says.

Without it, a woman is considered an "agunah," a chained woman bound to a man no matter how over their marriage might be. The implications of not having a get are serious in the Orthodox Jewish world. For Jews of other denominations, who interpret Jewish law differently, the requirement of a get is less stringent or dismissed altogether.

An Orthodox Jewish woman who does not receive a get, however, runs the risk of being shunned in her community and labeled an adulteress if she dares move on. And any future children she has are considered bastards permitted to marry only other bastards.

The complaint says that Epstein told the undercover FBI agents that his organization had kidnapped a husband every 12 to 18 months.

The complaint also says that Wolmark told the agents, "You need special rabbis who are going to take this thing and see it through to the end."

"I can say that we are pleased the court accepted our bail proposal. I anticipate Rabbi Wolmark will be released shortly," said Marc Agnifilo, Wolmark's attorney.

"The rabbi is a highly respected Gittin scholar, and he steadfastly denies the allegations that he ordered violence," said Agnifilo.

Wolmark, Esptein and Potash's attorneys all told CNN that they are confident their clients will have their bail processed and be out on a house arrest by the end of this week.

CNN's calls to the other defendant's attorneys were not answered.

All 10 defendants pleaded not guilty last week. If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

A federal judge set bail Friday for four of 10 men facing kidnapping charges after allegedly arranging the violent assaults of Orthodox Jewish husbands, the U.S. Attorney's Office said.

Judge Douglas Arpert set bail at $1 million for Jay "Yaakov" Goldstein, while the other three -- Moshe Goldstein, Avrohom Goldstein and Simcha Bulmash -- had bail set at $500,000, said Matthew Riley, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, District of New Jersey

.

Jay Goldstein's attorney, Aidan P. O'Connor, told CNN on Thursday he hoped his client would be able to leave jail and reunite with his family.

Goldstein, Rabbi Mendel Epstein and Rabbi Martin Wolmark, along with seven other defendants, are accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars to orchestrate the kidnappings of Jewish husbands to persuade them to grant divorces to their wives, according to a criminal complaint.

Goldstein is a sofer, a Jewish scribe who transcribes the Torah and writes other religious documents, including divorce papers, according to his attorney.

On Wednesday, Arpert set bail between $500,000 and $1 million for the two rabbis, along with four other defendants: Ariel Potash, Binyamin Stimler, David Hellman and Sholom Shuchat.

Arpert also ordered home arrest -- with exceptions to leave for medical reasons, attorney meetings and religious purposes -- for all six, according to court documents.

Jay Goldstein, the rabbis and the other men were arrested after an FBI undercover investigation that led to a raid on October 9, according to the criminal complaint.

In one conversation with undercover FBI agents, the complaint alleges that Epstein talked about forcing the divorces with the help of hired "tough guys," who he said used plastic bags to cover the husbands' heads, and electric cattle prods and karate to assault them.

"I guarantee you that if you're in the van, you'd give a 'get' to your wife. You probably love your wife, but you'd give a 'get' when they finish with you," Epstein told the undercover FBI agents.

A "get" is a document that Jewish law requires a husband to present to his wife to be issued a divorce, the complaint says.

Without it, a woman is considered an "agunah," a chained woman bound to a man no matter how over their marriage might be. The implications of not having a get are serious in the Orthodox Judaism world. For Jews of other denominations, who interpret Jewish law differently, the requirement of a get is less stringent or dismissed altogether.

An Orthodox Jewish woman who does not receive a get, however, a woman runs the risk of being shunned in her community and labeled an adulteress if she dares move on. And any future children she has are considered bastards permitted to marry only other bastards.

The complaint says that Epstein told the undercover FBI agents that his organization had kidnapped a husband every 12 to 18 months.

The complaint also says that Wolmark told the agents, "You need special rabbis who are going to take this thing and see it through to the end."

"I can say that we are pleased the court accepted our bail proposal. I anticipate Rabbi Wolmark will be released shortly," said Marc Agnifilo, Wolmark's attorney.

"The rabbi is a highly respected Gittin scholar, and he steadfastly denies the allegations that he ordered violence," said Agnifilo.

Wolmark, Esptein and Potash's attorneys all told CNN that they are confident their clients will have their bail processed and be out on a house arrest by the end of this week.

CNN's calls to the other defendant's attorneys were not answered.

All 10 defendants pleaded not guilty last week. If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

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Survivors ARE Heroes!

The Awareness Center believes ALL survivors of sex crimes should be given yellow ribbons to wear proudly.

Survivors of sexual violence (as adults and/or as a child) are just as deserving of a yellow ribbon as the men and women of our armed forces, who have been held captive as hostages or prisoners of war.

Survivors of sexual violence have been forced to learn how to survive, being held captive not by foreigners, but mostly by their own family members, teachers, camp counselors, coaches babysitters, rabbis, cantors or other trusted authority figures.

For these reasons ALL survivors of sexual violence should be seen as heroes!